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Conrad
History Conrad is a famous film star at Temple Studios, who carries on a secret life as a drag performer in the local saloon, and also dabbles in a mysterious, nameless self-help philosophy obviously patterned on Scientology. Conrad medicates himself with an unnamed liquid drug, which seems to lower his inhibitions. Appearance Appears in a black suit with tailcoats, casual sweater vest and trousers, or drag. Loop - Basic * Collects suitcase (Side Dressing Room) * Changes into drag (Seamstress Shop) * Drinks and sings at bar (Saloon) * Playfully seduces William on bar (Saloon) * Flirts with and spurned by Barman (Saloon) * Changes out of drag (Motel Room)* * Mocked by Gatekeeper (The Gates) * Makes ink blot (Side Dressing Room)** * Changes into suit and tails (Side Dressing Room) * Meets up with Andrea to head to bar (Dressing Room) * Performs magic trick with Andrea (Studio 3) * Admonishes Andrea (Corridors) * Visited by P.A. and drugged (Side Dressing Room) * Changes into casual clothes (Side Dressing Room) * Rehearses lines for scene with Romola (Side Dressing Room) * Interacts with Harry Greener (Corridor before Boardroom) * Dances briefly on table (Boardroom) * Briefly interacts with the Fool (Omar's Fool only?) (Corridors) * Scene with Romola (Studio 5) * Sent to... (Studio 8) by Mr. Stanford (via voice in Studio 5) * Shares fearful glance with Miguel (Stairs) * 1:1 in car park (via trailer in Woodchip Caravan Park) * asks mask to assist with heels and tights **1:1 in little room in dressing room Loop - Extended Conrad collects his suitcase and enters the Seamstress Shop. He undresses and puts on a black bra and sequined gown. He turns his back and invites an audience member to zip him up. In drag, he transforms into his alter ego ‘Deanna’. Resplendent and confident, he walks to the Tavern, where he flirts with Harry, Dwayne and The Barman. The men respond playfully and his womanly imitation is convincing except he has a full beard. William and Mary enter the bar, hoping to enjoy a night out. Conrad continues to camp it up and hops on stage to sing ‘I Can Never Go Home Anymore’. He begins to tease William, who’s reluctantly pulled up to perform. Conrad is jovial at first, but his mockery escalates and the atmosphere turns. At the same time, Dolores is having her birthday party on the floor below, and Wendy is being humiliated. The Tavern empties and Conrad is left flirting with The Barman. He’s still in drag and The Barman seems to think he’s a woman. They kiss passionately before Conrad pushes him away. He turns his back on The Barman and slowly removes his dress. The Barman can’t believe his luck as Conrad takes off his bra, but then he turns around and The Barman is disgusted to see that he’s a man. Conrad winks, ‘Come on, let’s take this to level three’, but The Barman chases him out of the bar, waving a bat and cursing. Conrad seems startled, ‘I’m trying to help you man!’ Conrad walks through the town in his underwear. He walks to his motel room, sits on the bed and stretches out his leg. He asks an audience member to remove his high heels and stockings. He reaches for a small bottle, from which he unscrews a pipette and squeezes several drops onto his tongue. There are a dozen audience members crammed into the room and he tells a woman not to let anyone else in. He starts to talk and someone enters. ‘I said keep the fucking door shut!’ he screams. He points to a painting on the wall called, ‘The Nightmare’. The painting is by Henry Fuseli from 1781. It shows a sleeping woman and a demonic apparition of a horse’s head leering over her. Conrad gives a lecture about life and self-help, ‘Obedience is the first level’. He rants, ‘Young or old, asleep or awake, alive or dead, it’s all the same. If this is a nightmare, when were we ever awake?’ He ends with a promise, ‘Dianetics – the bridge to freedom’. Dianetics is a set of ideas practiced by followers of Scientology. It regards the metaphysical relationship between the mind and body and was created by L Ron Hubbard. He founded the Church of Scientology in the early 1950s, and by the 60s it had a worldwide following. Conrad leaves his room and heads upstairs. He stops on a staircase landing and says to no’one in particular, ‘I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion’. This is a line from ‘The Glass Menagerie’, a play by Tennessee Williams. The main character is Tom Wingfield, who struggles with the gap between his own personal dreams and the reality of his situation. His aspirations are to write poetry and escape the daily drone of his life. With this particular quote, Williams is saying that the regular dramatist creates a dramatic illusion on the stage, which the audience takes for the truth. His play, ‘The Glass Menagerie’, offers itself as fiction, but is actually the truth disguised as illusion. On another occasion, Conrad is heard to mutter, ‘Thirty-five years in this workhouse,’ which is also a line from the play. Conrad approaches the studio gates. Like most visitors, he’s stopped by The Gatekeeper, who isn’t a fan of drag artists. He plays with Conrad’s earrings and mocks his clothes. Conrad offers him a dollar to let him through. The Gatekeeper holds out his cap to accept the bribe, but a dollar isn’t enough. Conrad puts in another and then another, until his wallet is empty. Finally The Gatekeeper lets him through with a derisory smirk. He heads for his dressing room where he takes an audience member and locks the door. Dressing Room 1:1 He removes her mask and says, ‘It’s okay, you can drop the act now.’ He sits her in a chair and warns her not to chase stardom. ‘Why do you do it, why do you persist?’ he says, ‘You’re gonna get burned if you get too close to the light.’ He creates an inkblot and gives it to her, before offering her a drop of potion from his pipette. Conrad changes into a suit and tails, and meets up with Andrea who’s wearing a sparkling red dress. They make their way to Studio 3, the ‘Fairground Set’ and Audience Bar. There’s a singer on stage talking to the audience, ‘Are you guys excited about the wrap party later?’ She spots the two actors and says, ‘Well look who we have here, if it isn’t our very own stars of the studio, Conrad and Andrea, and the two of them are going to perform a little magic.’ On a small side stage, Andrea climbs into a cardboard box and Conrad closes her in. He holds up a series of sharpened wooden sticks and asks an audience member to feel the end of one, before skewering the box with them. He manages to stick about a dozen through the cardboard, to gasps from the audience. Inside the box, Andrea contorts herself into the tiny spaces between the sticks. Conrad removes them one by one and Andrea pops out to loud applause. They leave the bar seemingly triumphant, but Conrad isn’t happy. ‘What were you playing at,’ he shouts, ‘You were meant to stick to the goddamn script!’ He heads back to his dressing room and catches The Assistant snooping around. ‘Looking for something?’ he asks. He takes off his shirt and they chase each other through the racks of clothes. Conrad takes his pipette and squeezes a drop into a cup that she’s carrying. He squeezes another drop onto his tongue. The Assistant leaves, and he prepares for his next scene. He sits at his dressing table and recites a couple of lines, ‘Honey, you look tired. Why don't you sit down?’ He pauses and looks at an audience member in the mirror, ‘Why don't you sit down?’ She sits down awkwardly and he continues, ‘Baby, could you give my shoulders a rub?’ She reaches out to rub his shoulders, but he stands up abruptly. Inside his dressing room is a small desk surrounded by caged boxes. He enters the space and an audience member follows him in before realising too late that there’s barely enough room for both of them. Conrad sits at the desk, getting ready and polishing his shoes. He writes a letter, stopping intermittently to look through the cages at Wendy and Andrea in the Main Dressing Room. He finishes the letter and puts it in an envelope. It’s addressed to ‘Ricky De Mille, Studio 12’ – Dear Ricky, Receiving your letter from Sea Corps was the first reassuring message that we’re on the right path. Marjorie and Jack were in town and we all believe that this is the first truly helpful method of self improvement / fulfilment that any of us have experienced. The details of the book are yet to be established, but following Dianetics, Jack fumbled across a mythological wildebeest of a book called ‘Excalibur’. Apparently it’s Hubbard’s vision and the first 6 people who read it went loony or died. Hokum maybe, but the truth is never far from fiction and I’ll be damned if I’ll rest until I’ve read it! In the meantime, I put my faith in you not to spread word too far. The details are yet to be deciphered and Hubbard is detailing a process that should fulfil all followers of Dianetics. Yours, Conrad. On another occasion, he picks up a flyer that reads, ‘Do you deserve success? Do you seek immortality? Unleash the power of your mind. Join us.’ He writes on it, ‘San Bernadino Arms, Motel Room 4’, and gives it to an audience member. Conrad remains in his tiny caged space, behaving strangely. He makes a shape with his hands under a spotlight and creates the shadow of a flying bird on the wall. He takes out another pipette and squirts a blob of ink onto a piece of paper. He folds the paper, creating a Rorschach inkblot, which he adds to a large collection pinned to the wall. He finishes dressing and makes his way to Studio 5. On the way, he bumps into Harry Greener in a corridor. Harry’s wearing his white suit and looking dapper. ‘They want you back, huh?’ asks Conrad. ‘Apparently so’, says Harry with a grin. ‘Hey weren’t you in the bar a minute ago?’ asks Harry, and Conrad, embarrassed about his alter ego, says ‘No that wasn’t me, you’re mistaken’. Harry walks on chuckling. Conrad arrives at Studio 5 to film a scene for ‘Close The Shutter Tight’. The title makes reference to a line in ‘Woyzeck’, from a lullaby sung by Marie. Conrad sits at a kitchen table and starts reading a newspaper. A young woman, Romola, joins him on the set and the two of them lip-sync to overdubbed lines. They play husband and wife in a bizarre domestic scene. Their voices are stilted and Romola doesn’t seem to know what’s going on. Mr Stanford directs her to a picture of the ‘Hollywood’ sign hanging on a wall. ‘They’re behind the picture’, he says. She moves the picture and reveals an alcove housing several sets of keys on hooks. Romola takes a set and tells Conrad that she’s going to drive to the canyon because she, ‘Ain’t never been to the canyon.’ He warns her that it’s night and there’s nothing to see. She says, ‘There’s a bright light all over town, it’s just glowin’. Mr Stanford cuts the scene and Romola wanders off in a daze. Conrad gets up to leave, but on his way out the voice of Mr Stanford stops him. ‘Good job today Conrad,’ he says, ‘but there’s one more thing before you go. We need to shoot one final scene in Studio 8’. Conrad is distraught and crumples to the floor. He gets up and moves to the forest on the Ground Floor. He seems to be crying as he staggers through the trees and falls to his knees. He walks to a trailer and shines a torch at the window. In dusty finger-writing it says ‘Studio 8’. He unlocks the door and pulls an audience member inside. Studio 8 1:1 He removes her mask and says, ‘Hi, I’m Conrad, what’s your name?’ He pulls back a curtain and he beckons her to sit on a high bed as he tells her a story. He points to a lamp that has a piece of scarlet string attached to it. He picks up the string and they begin to follow it. It leads them through another curtain, down a ramp and into the Basement car park. It’s completely dark apart from a torch that Conrad’s holding. They follow the trail until the scarlet string seems to stop. Conrad shines the torch against the low ceiling and they find more string. They follow it and this time it somehow ends up attached to his throat. Conrad suddenly shines the torch to one side of the room and it lights up a huge, white horse lying dead on the floor. He takes the woman to another room and whispers, ‘Things are never as they seem. The whole world is inside out’, before pushing her out into a corridor. Behind the door, she can hear him scream, as if the studio is devouring him. The notes in the Executive Room suggest that Conrad has discovered what ‘befalls a character when they challenge the studio’. Final Show Trivia Conrad’s surname may be a reference to Rock Hudson whose real name was Roy Scherer. Hudson was a Scientologist who spent his life hiding his homosexuality. By coincidence, there’s a Hungarian theatre actor called Peter Scherer, who has starred in stage versions of both ‘Woyzeck’ and ‘The Duchess of Malfi’. He’s a member of the ‘Krétakör’ theatre group whose fast-paced version of Woyzeck is entitled ‘W – Workers' Circus’. The horse is part of the Temple Studios logo and is a recurrent motif throughout the show. The entrance gates to the studio are flanked by two majestic stone stallions. Mr Stanford says, ‘I made the horse run. I can make it fall’. He grinds down a knight from a chess set and sprinkles it into a poisoned cup. Alice recites a story from the Koran describing how Allah created the horse. In a small office next to Studio 4 there’s an extract from the Book of Revelation about the ‘Seven Seals’ – Jesus opens the first four of the seven seals and this summons four beings that ride out on white, red, black and pale horses. These are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and they are harbingers of the Last Judgment, setting a divine apocalypse upon the world. On the cinema screen, Muybridge’s horse gallops endlessly on a loop, and the local bar is the ‘Horse & Stars Tavern’. There are references to Pegasus, a pure white winged stallion from Greek mythology. He was sired by Poseidon and foaled by the Gorgon Medusa. After his death, Zeus transformed him into the constellation ‘Pegasus’ and placed him in the sky. In Woyzeck, a horse is used to illustrate that man and beast are inseparable. A Showman presents a horse in a lit booth, claiming it to be as clever as any human, ‘This is no dumb animal, this is a person. A human being in animal form.’ He claims that his horse can use the power of reason just like a man. When Woyzeck kills Marie he is without this power and like an animal in human form. The horse behaves ‘indecently’ by defecating, which prompts the Showman to say, ‘That’s right, put society to shame. You see, this animal is still in a state of nature. Unidealised nature. He just can’t express himself, can’t explain things.’ His horse can count, but can’t inform others of the results. Woyzeck too cannot communicate his thoughts. In a curious scene in ‘The Day of the Locust’, Tod is shown a model of a dead horse that has been placed at the bottom of a swimming pool as a joke by Alice Estee. Another of his leaflets describes the various levels of the ‘Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’, an organisation devoted to the study and practice of the occult, founded in the late 19th Century. The three founders of the Order were Freemasons and members of Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. The Golden Dawn system was based on hierarchy and initiation like the Masonic Lodges. Much of the hierarchical structure used for the ‘Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia’, and later for the ‘Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’, was taken from ‘The Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross’. This was a German Rosicrucian organization founded in the 1750s by the Freemason and alchemist, Hermann Fichtuld. Quotes "Like a moth drawn to the light." References Category:Characters